What tools should I use to perform an SEO audit?

Conducting an SEO audit without access to several different tools is basically impossible. This is primarily because many elements that Google requires to be in proper condition cannot be checked manually. So, we need to base our SEO analysis on technology. Providers of such solutions are plentiful, and they offer a variety of options at a range of price options, whether free or paid monthly or annually.

Why is access to both free Google tools and commercial tools necessary?

For a full audit, we need both Google’s free tools and at least some of the commercially available ones. This is the only way we will be able to verify the full range of elements that need to work properly for a website to be visible in organic search results.

Although Google’s solutions for Webmasters provide us with a lot of information, unfortunately, it is not the full range, especially in the context of content verification and many strictly technical elements.

What are the most useful SEO audit tools, and what can be checked using them?

The range of SEO tools available on the market in Poland and abroad is really wide, and we have a lot to choose from, both in terms of the scope we can verify within a given tool and its price.

The following are examples of tools useful in performing SEO audits:

• Google Search Console
• Google Analytics
• Screaming Frog SEO Spider
• Senuto
• SemRush
• Ahrefs
• Majestic SEO
• Google Keywords Planner
• Google Page Speed Insights
• Similar Web

What can be checked using Google Search Console?

Google Search Console is basically the only tool through which Google communicates with the webmaster about the performance of his site, so we are able to check many errors, mainly related to the site’s organic visibility and interaction with the search engine robot.

Google Search Console is focused on several main modules:

1. Summary of service status, which consists of:
2. Overview – a basic screen that shows us the overall status of the site, its organic traffic, indexing, experiments and improvements
3. Verify URL – where, after typing in any URL from our website, we are able to check information about it, such as whether it has been indexed, whether there are any related problems, and how it displays on mobile devices, and we can also request the first or re-indexing of a particular sub-page

• Organic site effectiveness:
• Search results – where we can check exactly all the organic traffic of our website up to a maximum of 16 months back, compare it, verify what keywords and URLs generated our traffic, what number of clicks and impressions we achieved, average position and ctr
• Discover – information about the display of a given page within Google Discover

• Indexing in organic search results:
• Pages – where Google shows us the indexing level of the site, the presence of individual subpages in the index and specific errors with examples
• Movie pages – here, we find the same elements as for regular pages, but in the context of movie pages
• Site maps – where we will add or remove site maps
• Deletions – where we can report URLs for removal from Google’s index

• Experiments and personalization
• Page quality – where we will get information about the quality rating of our site, broken down into results for desktop and mobile devices
• Basic web indicators – that is, the results of the evaluation of individual Core Web Vitals
• Mobile Usability – information on whether the sub-pages on our site are usable on mobile devices and what errors they contain that make it difficult for users

• Safety and manual operations
• Manual actions – information on whether any manual actions have been taken for the site and whether any penalty has been imposed
• Security issues – whether any security issues have been detected for the site
• Links – information regarding what links, in what quantity and with what anchor texts direct to our website

What can be checked using Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is the richest and most accurate web analytics tool for websites. It allows you to check all user activity on a website regardless of its source. It is a free tool available to any website owner.

With Google Analytics, you can check the traffic to our website from every angle.

The main reports are:

1. Real-time site traffic
2. Reports on the lifecycle of users on a given page:
3. Acquisition – report on sources of user acquisition and sources of traffic acquisition from all possible channels
4. Engagement – a report on how users interact with the site, i.e. conversions, events, landing pages visited and screens
5. Revenue generation – information on e-commerce purchases, purchase paths, in-app purchases, ads, promotions
6. Retention – information about new and returning users
7. User reports
8. User attributes – detailed demographics and audiences
9. Technologies – the technologies users use, such as browser type
10. Data from Google Search Console – when these two tools are combined, we can view some of the data from GSC within Google Analytics

What can be checked with the Screaming Frog SEO Spider tool?

Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a desktop tool that crawls a website and presents information related to its structure and individual technical elements.

It is a paid tool billed once a year through the purchase of a 12-month license, the cost of which in 2023 is 239 euros per license for one to four people. However, it is worth noting that there is a free version of this tool, which has a minimum limitation of scanning a maximum of 500 pages, so it is a small service we can check without any charge.

Screaming Frog checks for us, among other things, such items as:

• List of internal URLs by type (e.g. html, css, images, pdf, etc.)
• List of outbound links from the site
• Security information
• Server response codes for subpages (whether the server returns valid responses or error responses)
• List of meta titles with information on whether they are original and meet length requirements
• List of meta descriptions along with information on whether they are original and meet length requirements
• List of meta keywords
• List of H headings and whether they are original
• List of images along with their parameters such as size or alt attribute fill
• List of canonical indications for each subpage
• Pagination
• Hreflangs
• Sitemaps
• Page Speed

What can you check with the Senuto tool?

Senuto is a paid Polish tool with which we can check a wide variety of elements related to our website’s visibility and support ourselves in creating content through a dedicated AI solution and keyword database.

However, focusing on the audit, it will be worthwhile to use especially the Senuto offered:

1. Visibility analysis tool that shows us:
2. on which keywords and in which positions our site is visible in organic search results, along with a graph
3. we can check the increases and decreases of individual positions over a period of time of our choosing
4. verify with whom we are competing in Google results, for which specific phrases
5. whether our service manifests seasonality
6. whether there is cannibalization of keywords within our site
7. what subpages, sections, and paths on our site are generating traffic
8. what are the characteristics of the phrases related to our site

• Monitoring tools

As part of Senuto, we can add to the continuous monitoring of the above site elements in the amount provided by our subscription plan so we can continuously monitor the progress of our activities.

Senuto is a paid tool that offers packages paid for by monthly subscriptions, ranging from £99 to £699 per month, with varying scope.

What can be checked with the SemRush tool?

SemRush is a paid tool from the United States for comprehensive website analysis. With its help, we can check many elements related to traffic for our designated site coming from different channels.

SemRush offers the possibility of quite detailed website analyses without the need to have access to them. Thus, we can check the data not only for our site but also for our competitors’ approaches.

SemRush is also a very good tool for analyzing the traffic for our site.

The main elements of the SemRush tool useful for an SEO audit are found within the SEO section and are:

• Competitive research – which consists of elements such as traffic analysis, organic visibility analysis, links leading to the site and keyword gap between the designated site and its competitors
• Keyword research – which consists of a keyword manager, keyword magic tool, keyword positions and organic traffic insights
• Link building – backlink analysis, backlink audit, link building support tool
• On page & tech SEO – which consists of automatic audit, listing management, SEO content template support content creation, page SEO checker and Log File Analyzer

Of course, this is not the full range of capabilities of the SemRush tool; it also has extensive analysis for other branches of online marketing, such as paid campaigns and social media. It can also be very helpful in creating website content.

The tool comes with a fee, billed monthly in subscription amounts ranging from $129 to $499 per month, depending on the package selected.

What can be checked with the Ahrefs tool?

The Ahrefs tool can be useful when conducting an SEO audit. The two key elements of such an analysis are technical verification and analysis of the inbound link profile.

Ahrefs allows us to analyze in detail which domains are linking to our site, using what anchor texts, and the number of backlinks. To facilitate this analysis, Ahrefs has introduced its own dedicated parameters for evaluating a website in terms of the quality of its link profile compared to others. These are Domain Rating and URL Rating.

A second useful feature of Ahrefs, when it comes to SEO auditing, is the automatic technical audit of the site, which shows us a really rich array of possible elements for improvement that do not appear in other tools or appear to a lesser extent.

With Ahrefs, we can also define projects for which the technical analysis will take place periodically. We will receive its results by email so as to be up-to-date with the site’s state.

Ahrefs is a paid tool. We can choose from packages with prices ranging from $99 to $999 per month.

What can be checked with the Majestic SEO tool?

The Majestic SEO tool analyses the profile of links pointing to a website. With its help, we can check basically every aspect related to link building of a given website.

The tool can be used to check the link profile of a website.

We can analyze a list of domains directing to our site, a specific list of URL addresses, and check the distribution of individual anchor texts. Thanks to this, we can get a comprehensive picture of the link profile of the indicated site. Majestic allows us to analyze not only the current links but also their history, up to 5 years back, so we can determine what the previous positioning looked like.

To facilitate comparisons between individual websites, the creators of the Majestic SEO tool created the Trust Flow parameter. This parameter evaluates sites based on the quality of their link profile on a 100-degree scale, allowing a general comparison of the quality of link building efforts for multiple websites.

Majestic SEO is a paid tool; depending on which package you choose, you will pay between $46 and $379 monthly for it.

What can you check with the Google Keywords Planner tool?

As its name suggests, Google Keywords Planner allows us to plan keywords for our website. Keywords Planner is a part of Google Ads, so it is not dedicated strictly to SEO activities but is useful for them.

The Google Keywords Planner is a part of Google Ads, so it is not dedicated strictly to SEO activities.

With this tool, we can check the number of searches for particular keywords we have indicated so we can assess whether it is worth including them in SEO. We can also get suggestions for keywords related to the subject area we have indicated.

The tool is also useful for SEO.

Google Keywords Planner is a free tool. However, to get information for our indicated words about specific monthly search volumes, not just their ranges, we must have an active Google Ads campaign on the same account.

What can you check with the Google Page Speed Insights tool?

The Page Speed Insights tool allows us to evaluate Core Web Vitals (Core Web Indicators) parameters for a given website, separately for mobile and desktop results. Thanks to this, we can find out how fast our website loads and what potential problems it may generate in user interactions.

This tool evaluates individual elements and provides information on what we can fix on the site to improve a given score. It also provides examples of individual errors.

The tool also provides us with examples of individual errors.

Like all Google tools, Page Speed Insights is a fully free tool.

What can you check with the Similar Web tool?

The SimilarWeb tool will come in handy when conducting an SEO audit. It allows you to obtain valuable information about your competitors and analyze the performance of your own site.

Here are a few key elements you can check with SimilarWeb that will work well for an SEO audit:

• Site traffic – SimilarWeb allows you to monitor the number of visits to a given site and the sources from which that traffic comes
• Keyword analysis – allows you to identify keywords that bring traffic to a competitor’s site
• Competition comparison – allows you to compare your own site with your competitors in terms of traffic volume, traffic sources, keywords and other relevant indicators
• Demographic analysis – allows you to understand who is visiting your site, including their age, gender and location
• Organic and paid traffic analysis – the ability to monitor how much traffic the site is generating through organic and paid results
• Content popularity analysis – allows you to identify the most popular content on competing sites
• Trend analysis – allows you to track changes in site visitor traffic and behaviour

Similar Web is a paid tool that offers packages for $125 or $333 per month. A dedicated solution is also available for large companies, which will be a customized package of available elements at a price set for a specific company.

Which tools are necessary to conduct an SEO audit?

In order to conduct a professional SEO audit, we will need all of the free Google tools mentioned above. They are the absolute foundation. However, by themselves, they are not enough to make our audit comprehensive enough and to complete optimization recommendations.

We will still need to supplement the information that Google offers us with information from commercial tools that will allow us to:

• In-depth technical analysis (such as Screaming Frog and Ahrefs)
• Competitive analysis (e.g. SemRush, Similar Web or for the Polish service Senuto)
• A thorough link profile analysis (e.g. Majestic SEO, Ahrefs or SEMrush)

Summary

The market for SEO tools is very wide, each offering a slightly different set of capabilities, but some of their functions overlap. So, in order to choose the right tools for us, we need to analyze what specific parameters we will be checking and to what extent. This will allow us to determine the optimal set of solutions for us, both in terms of the information we want to obtain and the scale of our activities.

A large SEO agency will need completely different packages in the same tools than a freelancer, and this is related not only to the price but to the substantive scope and the monthly number of audits performed.